Moir on the muppets
Jo Moir at Newsroom writes:
Stuart Nash, Meka Whaitiri, Michael Wood and Jan Tinetti are all names that have haunted Chris Hipkins’ thinking far too often in the short five months he’s been Prime Minister. …
Hipkins started his tenure in February leading a national emergency disaster, but ever since he’s been riding out a storm brought upon him by his own team, dealing with one ministerial disaster after another.
The group of people around him who he can actually trust diminishes each week, and questions are rightly being asked as to whether his ministers simply don’t respect the office of the prime minister.
Nash and Wood both lied to Hipkins – hamstringing his ability to act fast given he chose to believe them – and Whaitiri waited until he’d left the country to announce her defection to Te Pāti Māori.
Can’t imagine it happening to Helen Clark!
And in his statement following his resignation Wood still hadn’t quite clocked on to the fact that he was solely responsible for the mess he had found himself in, saying “in some respects my de-prioritisation of my personal financial affairs has led to this situation”.
There’s no “some” about it, Wood’s inability to sort out his conflicting shares is completely to blame.
It’s no longer fathomable that Wood is a victim of his own forgetfulness, not even Hipkins believes that anymore.
If Wood had just been a beneficiary of the shares he may well have forgotten, but he was an active trustee and Hipkins told media it just isn’t plausible anymore that he didn’t realise the conflict and manage it.
A trustee is actually required by law to know on and report on what is in the trust.
Hipkins will be dreading getting on a plane to China at the weekend for a week-long trade mission while his scandal-prone caucus stays behind.
If he can’t nip the screw-ups in the bud, even the smaller-scale ones like Tinetti facing the Privileges Committee, he doesn’t have a hope of going on the campaign trail with a straight face and claiming he has a competent team to run the country for the next three years.
The UK Privileges Committee recommended Boris Johnson get a 90 day suspension (leading to his resignation) for misleading the British House of Commons. Will Tinetti get anything for misleading the NZ House of Representatives?
The Ministers in trouble in NZ are not lowly ranked ones. Tinetti is No 6 and Wood was 7 so both front benchers. Kiri Allan is No 10 and Nash was No 11.
This tweet sums up how Wood has turned himself and the Government into a laughing stock.